VALUE+ meets the need to recognise and validate knowledge skills and competences acquired by home care givers (in France, Spain, Italy and Romania) through formal, non formal and informal learning as well as guarantee conversion of certified Learning Outcomes to ECVET credits (as for the ECVET Recommendation) which can be used in all the project partner’s countries within a scope of transnational mobility of workers in the care services field. In this sector there is a growing demand for qualified workforce all over Europe. This demand is closely linked to the progressive aging of population. This phenomenon assumes different characteristics in different European countries. In fact, while in northern and center European areas both private and public social and health services are organised and structured to satisfy the rising demand for care services, in the countries of the Mediterranean area this demand is only marginally covered by institutional services and the workforce is immigrant (mainly from East Europe) and poorly qualified. The project aims at starting a renewal process of Italian, French, Romanian and Spanish VET and employment systems in order to: - Transfer/adapt the recognition and validation system (instruments/models) used in France to the other project’s partner countries; - Introduce innovation of VET systems in the countries involved in the partnership which will be able to start the certification of skills and competences and the conversion of certified Learning Outcomes to ECVET credits. The issues to be addressed are the following: 1. The increasing demand for occupational profiles in the field of home care services; 2. The massive presence of unskilled workers without skills and competence certification fostering the illegal labour market; 3. The difficulty that carers experience in having recognised skills and competences acquired through work experience and non-formal and informal learning; 4. The difficulty faced by carers in having recognised/certified by other European countries the learning outcomes they gained in their own countries. The objectives of the Project VALUE + are the following: 1. Compare the training paths for qualification of home care givers adopted by the Regions/Countries involved in the project; 2. Compare the systems of recognition and certification of Learning Outcomes of people who work and/or intend to operate in the home care services field in the countries involved in the project; 3. Adopt shared and/or comparable tools and procedures for validation/certification of Learning Outcomes; 4. Jointly agree on adopting the conversion techniques to ECVET credits for a joint recognition of Learning Outcomes (Output: Toolkit for White Labor and Transparent Skills); 5. Realise in service training of 12 staff members of VET organisations on the use of the identified instruments/procedures; 6. Experiment and test the agreed tools and procedures for skills and competences certification with N. 100 Final Beneficiaries; 7. Transform the certified Learning Outcomes in ECVET credits (Memorandum ECVET); 8. Facilitate legal work placement in the home care sector in the countries participating in the project also thanks to ECVET credits; 9. Raise the quality of services provided to households and to the partially or totally dependent people in Europe; 10. Disseminate the use of the produced outputs (methodologies, tools, procedures) at EU level. In order to pursue these goals it has been chosen a partnership which differs both in the quality of the adopted recognition and validation of skills and competences and in the policies/methods used to face the increase in the needs of qualified home care givers. The partnership is formed by organisations with a well established experience in certification of skills and competences as well as by organisations without an institutional system of recognition/validation of skills and competences. Furthermore, none of the partners has adopted a system of recognition/conversion to ECVET credits. VALUE+ project intendes to operate focusing on transfer of good practice and Community empowerment through involvement of institutional actors and VET bodies from the 4 countries in the Strategic Partnership (France, Spain, Italy and Romania). It is also intended to establish an European complementarity between actions that have been carried out in different geographical contexts with a view to: - sharing methods and tools for recognition and validation of skills and competences acquired through formal, informal and non-formal learning; - implementing the system for ECVET credits recognition in the field of home care services.
Through the Value Plus Project, the partners worked to build a common path to offer low qualified workers in the home care sector the possibility to have their non-formal and informal learning recognised and converted into ECVET credits. Value Plus has indeed met the need to validate and recognise the knowledge and skills acquired within informal/non formal context by home carers from Spain, Italy and Romania, ensuring the conversion of certified Learning Outcomes into ECVET credits (according to the ECVET Recommendation) that can be spent in all project countries with a view to transnational labour mobility. There is a growing demand for qualified workforce all over Europe. This demand is closely linked to the progressive aging of population. The phenomenon assumes different characteristics in different European countries. In fact, while in northern and center European areas both private and public social and health services are organised and structured to satisfy the rising demand for care services, in the countries of the Mediterranean area this demand is only marginally covered by institutional services and the workforce is immigrant (mainly from East Europe) and low qualified. The project has led to the starting of an important process of renewal of the Italian, Spanish and Romanian VET organisations (learning validation, vocational training and placement). By implementing the project the following steps have been taken: -adapting models, tools and procedures for validation of learning used in France to the contexts of the project partners’ countries (Italy/Abruzzo region, Spain/Catalunya region and Romania/Bacău county; -innovation of the VET systems in all the countries involved in the partnership which, thanks to the project, have known and started their first trials for the validation of learning, the certification of competences and the conversion of certified Learning Outcomes into ECVET credits. The main issues addressed have been the following: 1. The increasing demand for occupational profiles in the field of home care services; 2. The massive presence of unskilled workers without skills and competence certification fostering the illegal labour market; 3. The difficulty that carers experience in having recognised skills and competences acquired through work experience and non-formal and informal learning; 4. The difficulty faced by carers in having recognised/certified by other European countries the learning outcomes they gained in their own countries. objectives achieved by the Value Plus project : 1) a comparative analysis of the training paths leading to the qualification of family carers in the partners'; contexts through the drafting of Output 1: Analysis of qualifications in the home care sector in the regional and national contexts of the Value Plus partners; 2) the comparison of Learning Outcomes recognition and certification system for individuals who work and/or intend to work in the home care sector in the countries involved by Value+ , through the development of Output 2: White labour and Transparent skills/Guide for the recognition and comparison of competences in the home care sector within the European panorama; 3) the shared adoption of tools and procedures for the validation and certification of Learning Outcomes and for their conversion into ECVET credits which led to the development of Output 3: TOOLKIT for transparent skills in the home - care service sector; 4) the professional development of 24 VET professionals from Spain, Romania and Italy who have been trained to the use of the identifies tools and procedures 5) the testing with 200 final Beneficiaries (100 Italians, 50 Spanish and 50 Romanians); of the shared tools and procedures for the certification of competences 6) the transformation of certified Learning Outcomes into ECVET credits; 7) greater awareness among tested beneficries of their competences 8) better chance of regular placement in the Labour market of home carers in the countries participating in the project also thanks to ECVET credits; 9) raising the quality of services provided to households and partially/totally dependent individuals in Europe; 10) dissemination of outputs produced (O1, O2 and O3) at EU level. The partners, although diversified and with very different professional languages, always cooperated in the pursuit of the project purpose. An approach to the development of innovation and community empowerment has been adopted in the project management. Institutional actors and VET organisations from 4 different countries (France, Spain, Italy and Romania) were involved. A European complementarity has been identified in the actions carried out in different geographical contexts for the sharing of methods and tools, validation of learning and conversion into ECVET credits. The experimentation with final beneficiaries, has made it possible to enhance non-formal and informal learning experiences of those working in the home care sector without professional qualifications. The conditions have been created for the widespread adoption of shared learning validation systems in the home care sector, for the certification of competences and for their conversion into ECVET credits.